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Whole Wheat Freezer Rolls

Homemade Whole Wheat Freezer Rolls means fresh and delicious rolls any day of the week! Simply defrost, rise and bake. Perfect make-ahead plan for any dinner!

Fresh rolls are a large reason why I would fail at a low-carb diet. I make them a lot.

Since moving to New York City, its been hard trying to find freezer rolls! I used to buy them all the time out west, but they are mysteriously missing from my grocery store shelves in the city. I’ve gone empty handed for 7 months!! I loved the convenience of them and every Sunday before church I’d pull them out so they’d be ready for the oven before dinner and then save any extras for little turkey sandwiches for my kids lunches the upcoming week. I had my system DOWN.

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But here it’s been a little harder, so I took matters into my own hands and created my own freezer roll recipe. Yeasted doughs freeze really nicely, so this was a relatively easy recipe to throw together. The only hard part about it is managing a larger dough ball while kneading. I also used a kitchen scale to portion out my 2-ounce dough balls into rolls (this is the one I have). Same sized dough balls make for even-steven rolls that rise and bake the exact same way *and* look just like the store bought ones, hence the scale. If you don’t have a scale, as long as your dough balls are slightly larger than golf balls, you should be fine.

Below are a few photos I snapped during the process of rising and baking. As you can tell from the top photo, this recipe yields tender and soft whole wheat rolls that go with just about anything. AND! I’m back to making little sandwiches for my kids’ school lunch.

Give these a try this weekend! Printable recipe below. Have a great day, friends!!

Ingredients

Instructions

In a large bowl, stir warm milk together with yeast and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Stand 5-10 minutes to proof yeast.

Using a wooden spoon, stir in melted butter, remaining 1/2 cup sugar and all of the all purpose flour until well combined. Continue stirring as you incorporate the salt and whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup at a time. Through this process, you'll have to switch to kneading with your hands.

Once dough is tacky, but not tacky enough to leave remnants of dough stuck to your hands, you can finish kneading. About 5 minutes. Dough should be smooth. Place dough into a large, greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap or clean dish towel and rise 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Punch down dough and divide into 2 ounce pieces.(Slightly larger than a golf ball.) You should get about 40 total. Roll each dough ball to create roll and place on a parchment paper or aluminum foil lined baking sheet. Cover gently with more foil and place flat into freezer.

After 24 hours, transfer dough balls into large ziploc freezer bags, and place back into freezer.

To bake, place 16-20 rolls into a greased 9x13 baking dish. Defrost and let rise until 2-2 1/2 times larger, 4-6 hours**)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and cooked completely.

Notes

If you would like to skip the freezer method completely, you can place the rolled rolls from step 4 right into the greased baking dish in step 6 and rise and bake.

If you want these to be regular freezer rolls (non-whole wheat), just replace the whole wheat flour for all purpose.

**My apartment is on the chilly side, so it took me 6 hours to get the rise I was looking for before baking. Watch your rolls and bake accordingly!

Wow, these rolls look delicious and very easy to make. I have a lot of whole wheat flour in my pantry and I’m making a special pasta dish tonight for dinner and these rolls will go perfectly with it. I’ve been watching my carb intake but it’s Fat Tuesday. I use multi grain pasta and I’ll be going to a spin class just before dinner so why not try these rolls tonight.

I made these and they turned out wonderful! I have some in my freezer right now. I posted pictures of my rolls on FB and friends asked for the recipe. I shared the link to this page with them. It was fun to make and great to have them in the freezer.